My husband and I are bakery enthusiasts so of course when we were staying in the East Village for a few days, we hit up as many as we could. Here’s our thoughts:
1-2) Petit Chou: 5/10 – We visited in the mid-afternoon so I don’t think the baked goods were as fresh as they could be. The famous chocolate croissant was a letdown as it was almost completely hollow inside and half-filled with cjocolate pudding. The croissant pastry itself was nice but we wished it was more substantial. It felt a bit like a croissant casing outside of a big mass of chocolate. The pistachio eclair was fine but not memorable.
3) La Cabra: 8/10 – This is a repeat visit for us. The famous cardamom bun is nowhere near as good as it was a couple of years ago. It’s now tougher and lacking in cardamom flavor. The croissants however were excellent, particularly the ham and cheese croissant. The sweetness of the ham against the salty cheese was perfection.
4) Spirals: 10/10 – I was fully expecting this to be a gimmick, but the pumpkin cinnamon roll was everything I’ve wanted a cinnamon roll to be (and never found until now). Perfectly plush and soft, balanced in sweetness, perfect amount of tangy cream cheese frosting. Definitely say yes if they ask to heat it up for you. We will be back to try more flavors.
5-6) Win Son Bakery: 9/10 – I know this place gets a lot of heat for gentrifying Taiwanese food but I just needed to try that fan tuan once. I’m glad I did because it was delicious. I’ve never had one before but I grew up loving pork floss, so this was right up my alley. The millet mochi donut was warm and freshly fried. It tasted like a cross between a cider donut (without the apple cinnamon flavor profile) and Chinese nian gao. It could be a tiny bit sweeter for my taste but I otherwise really enjoyed it.
7-8) From Lucie: 8/10 – I hated how expensive the carrot cake was but damn if it wasn’t one of the best I’ve ever had. The cake was so moist, light, and bouncy while the cream cheese frosting was almost whipped in its texture. 10/10 for that alone. However we felt the chocolate chip cookie was a big letdown. It tasted like a sugar cookie that happened to have chocolate chips in it, and there was too much sea salt.
9) The Pastry Box: 10/10 – Absolutely elite chocolate chip cookie. Perfect texture and just the right balance of toffee flavor, chocolate, and salt. Would’ve loved to try more things here if we had more stomach space because the vibes were great inside.
10) LaLa Bakeshop: 7/10 – The matcha lava cake was beautiful. Moist fluffy dough with plenty of strongly flavored matcha cream inside. The pork floss sausage roll however was really disappointing. Very dry and hard with an overly sweet filling that really threw me off. I expected to love this because pork floss rolls are my favorite thing to get at Chinese bakery but I had to throw this out after a few bites. I would give them another shot though since we bought these at the end of the day.
11) Smor Bakery: 9/10 – A much better cardamom bun than the one at La Cabra. We were just in Copenhagen last month, and this tasted spot-on with the cardamom buns we had there.
12) Mary O’s Irish Soda Bread Shop: 7/10 – I was hoping for a more buttery melt-in-your-mouth texture, but the texture here was a little bit of a letdown. The jam and Irish butter was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. We waited 20 minutes on a Thursday morning for these because they were only baking a few batches at a time, and I’d say that was too long.
13-14) Hani’s Bakery: 9/10 – This was a repeat visit for us. Everything costs $2-3 more than it should but I love the flavors of the baked goods here. The shakshuka Danish was so unique and delicious. The pistachio halva rice krispie treat is really good too. I’m also a big fan of their honey cake.
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